cause he wont bow to them and give them the quotes they so desperately desire. He has made many journalists act out of character and unprofessional by just giving then the silent treatment.

They should just ignore Manuel and go after the sure to please quote machine Curt Schilling. I hope we keep him on as a Fat Billy type mid-late season starter. He never holds his tongue although he did on Jeopardy.

Or, because it fits into their idea of what "Manny being Manny" is. It's a well-observed phenomenon that people remember anecdotes that reinforce their personal beliefs while forgetting contradictory examples. Show a Manny-hater a diving catch he makes in the outfield and they'll write it off as a fluke; show them games-played statistics and they'll forget them; but use the phrase "Manny's hammy" and everyone knows what you mean.

When you think about it, it's not so different from Vice President Cheney talking about 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. People believed him in the absence of any evidence because they wanted it to be true.

Certainly out of the blue that the Red Sox sent Lester down... to Portland of all places. There is that off-day coming up between the Sox/Yankees series. Probably wanted Lopez to use as a lefty/specialist.

Tavarez must have made quite a statement his last start, perhaps. I'm not sure how they're going to play this. Off-day, then the next go-through have Tavarez pitch. Maybe bring Lester back then?

Chicago got some very nasty thunderstorms a couple of hours ago, knocking out power to 186,000 people. Hopefully the ballpark wasn't damaged at all. There may have actually been a tornado west of town. I don't think it'll affect game time.

Theo Epstein was interviewed on Channel 7 in Boston, promoting the Hot Stove, Cool Music concert, and he was asked about the Lester roster move. He said, "It's not really a demotion. We're sending him to Portland for one start so we can get Javier Lopez up here because for some lefty-lefty matchups..." He also mentioned "fine-tuning" for the start in Portland for Lester. And he did say Lester will be back up on September 2nd.

Give a call to Tavarez for really allowing the Red Sox to make this move and get Lopez up here for the White Sox and Yankees series.

What's been disappointing me lately is people next to me at Fenway just repeating the usual crap that's not true about Manny. It's just commonplace to see Manny running for a ball in the corner and say "Run, Manny! He doesn't even know there's a game going on, hahaha." I always wanna give the person a smack for A. being wrong and B. unoriginality.

I just don't get why a convenience store would sponsor a starting time. So folks go into a Chicago 7-11 and order up their usual slurpee, pack of smokes, lottery ticket and now a "How bout them White Sox?" Or people go to the Cell in the middle of the night looking for smokes and a bag of cheezie poos? I just dunno.

"They just announced that there will possibly be a 9 p.m. Central time start. (That's 10 p.m. for all of you on the East Coast.) Indications are that the rain will be moving out of the area over the next 45 minutes. It has actually slowed at the moment, and the puddles on the field have gotten a bit smaller."

L-girl - just thought I would let you know that J.D. Drew was the whipping boy on WEEI. 15 plate apperances vs the Rays and zero RBI's. Of course he only batted with RISP only five times in the three games and went 1 for 5.

Don't teams generally have a 4 man rotation in post-season anyways? Of course, if a starter goes down you'd always want another one. Or someone for mop-up duty. But I can't see Lester in the post-season either.

Lester will be on the post season roster? How, he can't come back up until the 2nd unless there is an injury (10 days before you can call back up). Isn't the 31st the day that they have to be on the roster to make the post season?

I'd like to put a gadget w/ my Blogger dashboard on my iGoogle home page. I have a Gmail gadget, very handy to combine those. But when I want to blog, I have to go to my regular bookmark, which seems silly.

"Gilovich is firmly rooted in rationalism. What he describes here is the danger inherent in our flawed use of reason in combination with the good old common sense which leads us to believe things that aren't true. Gilovich methodically walks the reader through the various ways human judgment fails us, not in order to dismiss reason, but so that, recognizing our mistakes, we might work to conquer them in our daily lives."

Amazon:

"Sports fans who think that basketball players shoot in "hot streaks" ... adhere to erroneous beliefs, according to Gilovich, associate professor of psychology at Cornell. ... he skewers popular but mistaken assumptions. Faulty reasoning from incomplete or ambiguous data, a tendency to seek out "hypothesis-confirming evidence" and the habit of self-serving belief are among the factors Gilovich pinpoints in his sophisticated anaylsis."

Not that I can find. The problem with iGoogle is that it's used more for getting information rather than sending information out, which is annoying. I see a lot of search hits for RSS feeds for blogs, but nothing where you get the total package like you get on Blogger itself.

Gilovich methodically walks the reader through the various ways human judgment fails us, not in order to dismiss reason, but so that, recognizing our mistakes, we might work to conquer them in our daily lives."

The Brady Bunch taught us that years ago....."Mom said no ball in the house" Bobby learned....

Sorry L-girl, I don't see much to help. I added a links tab to my page that has utility links like that. But I think you are looking for something more sophisticated, like actually having blogger as one of the tabs.

Sorry L-girl, I don't see much to help. I added a links tab to my page that has utility links like that. But I think you are looking for something more sophisticated, like actually having blogger as one of the tabs.

Right, that's what I was looking for. But you're right, I don't think it can work.

I have a bookmark tab, too - I guess I'll put Blogger in it. Altho I'm not sure that's really quicker or easier than a regular pull-down bookmark. But at least it's all in one place, which I like.

I'd like to put a gadget w/ my Blogger dashboard on my iGoogle home page. I have a Gmail gadget, very handy to combine those. But when I want to blog, I have to go to my regular bookmark, which seems silly.

lol - broke out my copy of The Demon-Haunted World, looked up baseball in the index and got this:

"An investigation by my colleague Tom Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell, shows persuasively that our ordinary understanding of the basketball streak is a misperception."

Small world.

On baseball, Sagan says:

In baseball, there's the related by contrary myth that someone batting below his average is "due" to make a hit. This is no more true than a few heads in a row makes the chance of flipping tails next time anything other than 50 percent.

L-girl - if you use firefox, then you should go to their home page and you can see all type of extensions. There is even a Red Sox theme for the browser (which I installed on the MFY fans known as the in-laws computer, boy were they pissed, lol). Just look at the updates etc and you will see all sorts of extensions.

His Keys for tonight included a guide to the SoSH Game Threads which is pretty funny (and scarily accurate). Enjoy!!

*******

A few of you who read KEYS on blogspot, perhaps even more, do not know about SoSH Game Threads. Bless you. It is like being blissfully unaware of war or robbery or pain. But blissful though ignorance may be, it is transient, jerking roughly into the sharp steel of knowledge. And this KEY shall be that blade.

Each game day on the SoSH board, an internet misfit starts an electronic thread dedicated to chronicling, in real time, the events of the day’s game. Since this tradition began, thousands of posts, millions of words, have been devoted to the travails of our Red Sox, and 90 percent of them are things like "score" or "f*cking Tito."

As in so many otherwise meaningless pursuits, complex codes of conduct have emerged to imbue significance to what is fundamentally a squandering of God’s gift of life.

•A game thread may not be started until midnight of game day in Eastern Time.•A new game thread may not be started until the old game is complete.•The same poster begins a thread for each game until the Red Sox lose.•No matter what he does, a poster named "SexyBanana" is not allowed to start game thread—ever.•All of these rules are periodically invalid when anarchy seems like a good idea.•If Curt Euro wants to get drunk and start game threads where he talks about the size of his teammates’ testicles, that is fine.

Once the rules are observed a game thread follows a basic format until the game begins.

A. The thread starter posts about how there will be a big winning streak because he is starting the thread.B. SoSHers desperately search for and post stupid pictures that some how connect to the thread starter’s handle.C. Borderline pornography gets posted.D. Pictures that mock the opposing team (note: dead oriole, dead blue jay, dead ... athletic) are posted.E. More borderline pornography.F. Jose posts KEYS.G. Still more borderline pornography.H. Inside joke from SoSH’s elusive Pinsetting and Gutterballs forum.I. MoVaughn’sTruck posts Red Sox game notes.J. Lineups are posted.K. Lineups are complained about.L. More borderline pornographyM. First pitch.

After the game begins, the thread varies a bit more, as one would expect, depending on whether the Sox are winning or losing, but much of the basic storyline is consistent. So let’s assume it’s a home game and walk through the sequence.

This continues more or less for six or seven innings until the game nears its conclusion. If the Sox are getting killed, the number of posts per minute declines precipitously. If not, the server continues to crash periodically. Let’s pick up the sequence in the late innings.

A. Complaint about the starter being left in to long.B. Complaint about starter being taken out to soon.C. Gnashing of teeth about who is warming up.D. Question of why Papelbon isn’t being brought in in this "high leverage 7th inning situation"E. Cursing at Mike Timlin.F. Apology and explanation of how poster has always loved Mike Timlin.

Eventually, for better or for worse, the game ends, but with decidedly different paths depending on whether it was a win or a loss. For a loss the sequence is:

A. We can still come back, only two outs.B. Come on, come on.C. F*ck you whoever made the last out.D. Complaint about how this is a terrible lossE. Yankees update.F. Calls for players to be traded/manager fired.G. Complaint that the sky is falling.H. Riposte that everything is fine.I. More complaining until midnightJ. At midnight a new poster start’s the next day’s thread.

Of course, if they win the path is quite different.

A. Water.B. Pictures of polluted bodies of water are posted.C. Poster kevlog posts pictures of fireworks.D. More pictures of untreated sewage pop up.E. Yankees updateF. Insistence that this was a huge win.G. Agreement.H. Predictions that this will start a long winning streak.I. AgreementJ. Someone talks about how drunk they are.K. Agreement.L. The poster who started the day’s game thread starts the next day’s after midnight, usually congratulating themselves for the victory.

I wonder how many players on a team prefer day-night doubleheaders rather than losing a scheduled day off after a rain-out. And I wonder how many of them would start out by saying "Well, I'd certainly rather not have any rain-outs."

Speaking of Baltimore, Dave Tremblay played for the local 9 (Kingston, ON) in the summer of '74 when his hometown team folded (Carthage, NY). Apparently, all the kid wanted to do was play ball, so a local businessman got him a job as a lifeguard so he'd have something to live on. Life was simple back then, I guess they didn't worry too much about green cards and such. It was amateur ball, probably the caliber of small US College. Some of the guys here have kept in touch with him over the years and the local rag did a story on him. Alas, now the entire league (Border League) has folded.

ish said... I wonder how many players on a team prefer day-night doubleheaders

I would say none of them, except bench guys because they know they will play.....especially when you sit there for 5 hours till they postpone it.....If the oppurtunity arises , i assume Gagne will be slotted to close of these games tommorrow...

Went to dinner and then we rented and watched A League of Their Own. Worked out. No game. A few things:

"But I can't see Lester in the post-season either."

The guy could have some great starts in September and then we'll want to see him in there. And about the rules--Eckersley was saying something about how since we've got two guys on the DL, Lester could come up after Sep 1 and still be on post-season roster. Or, actually, since his next start will be Sept 2nd, they could call him up Aug 30th. I don't know. Something like that.

About humans seeing stuff that isn't there: I generally agree with the JoS/L-Girl household stance on facts and all that. Like, a good example is something I thought of the other day. I walked down a street near my house, and some people were standing on the sidewalk, blocking it, waiting for other people to come out of their house. This same thing had happened recently as I walked by the same spot. My immediate thought was "Wow, whenever I walk by here, there's ALWAYS someone standing and waiting." Then I thought about it. It was two times. Out of a lot. But I'll still think of it as "that place where people stand," even though I know it happens very infrequently.

It's like coincidences. Me and L-Girl have talked about this before. Like, Seinfeld "coincidences" happen a lot, like, you'll say a line from a show, and then THAT episode will be on soon after. Thinking rationally, it's not a "coincidence" because the damn show is on four times a night. But it FEELS like a crazy, cosmic event. "I was just talking about this! Oh my god!" I don't know, I think it's fun to think of it that way. Maybe this is why religion is so popular: People know it's bullshit but it's fun for them.

The one area where I kind of disagree with the whole fact-y fact-y thing, involves the human element. Like, I'd take a guy like Lou Merloni over a guy with stats SLIGHTLY better than his. Any day. Know what I mean?

And about being "due"--well, in coin flips, yes, there's no "due." 50/50 shot, every time. (Although I LOVE to try to will stuff to happen with my brain--again, I know it's BS, but it's fun, and you only live once...). And if it's Strat-o-matic baseball, then, again, there's no "due" or "hot bat." But coins and cards and dice don't have brains. Humans do. The player KNOWS he hasn't had a hit in a while. This CAN affect his performance. It could be good or bad, but it will affect the guy.

Even though I have less than zero use for any religion in my life, I'm not sure wrestling -- which I'd describe as a transparent charade/spectacle that provides people with distracting entertainment -- is a good analogy.

There has to be more people who take religion seriously than people who believe in wrestling.